Recently the NYTimes.com said that a “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts”. Andrew Sullivan also thinks that “there is a real conundrum here”. If you look through his blog for the posts titled, Crime Falls Further, you will see people offer many good theories for why this is.
My belief, ever since I read this book, Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift by David K. Foot with Daniel Stoffman, is that it has to do with demographics. Crime, revolutions, riots, even wars: these are all byproducts of countries have an excess of young men. When your national demographics shape up like that, you will have trouble. Likewise, as your nation gets older, you will have less of that.
I think there are other causes of these serious societal problems, but it needs that fuel, and the demographic analysis explains it. Older men equals less crime.
Even if you disagree with this idea, I highly recommend this book. It’s well written, easy to read, and very thought provoking, I recall.
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